"Ultra Q" drama from.... 1966(!), episode twelve of 28 recap

 

 Air Dates: January 2nd until July 3rd, 1966 though episode #28 didn't air until December 14th

Sundays at 7:00 pm on TBS, 28 total episodes that were 25+ minutes in length. Created by Eiji Tsuburaya, directed by his oldest son Hajime.

Subs by Tgwoe, screenshot dimensions 1436 x 1076(4:3). This classic series also has a color version but I prefer older shows/films in Black and White as that seems to give off a more creepy vibe which the subber also thought.

Ratings: **** Didn't find the ratings until the ninth episode but did update the first eight shows. This series had such high ratings but back in 1966 there were only a few regular stations and no cable. This drama ran opposite another sci-fi show called "W3" which was very popular and before this series began had an average rating of 23%. However "Ultra Q" was much more popular and the other show slipped below 10%!!!! The average rating  for these 28 episodes was 32.4%, the rating for this twelfth episode was 32.6% and will update this section for each show. 

 In the middle are the main three characters, who they are will be revealed below. The man on the left end is Eiji Tsuburaya and he is the #1 special effects man/director of all time in Japan. He did all of the special effects for the classic TOHO films such as creating the costumes, sets, etc. and of course most reading this have seen the "Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan" and other movies. This TV series was the first of it's kind in Japan and Tsuburaya had created this series where he didn't want the focus to be on monsters but the story which was the format for the old American series "Outer Limits". But TOHO wanted his unique monsters and there will be a different one in each show, will update this top section now and again with more trivial tidbits. Tsuburaya had access to all of his old costumes so would often mix them up such as the head from a 1965 film, the body from a 1961 movie and so on.

 

**** This is a new feature for episode eleven and will update it every other recap. This mini section will have the monsters/creatures that we have seen to date and you can see more of them as a bit further down are the links to all of the episodes. Will have two screenshots of the creature though not every show had one but the first episode had two. The four pics below are from the first show with the top two of being of a prehistoric monster called Gomes, his only power was being very large and powerful. The two pics below that are also from the first show and Gomes battled another prehistoric monster called Litolaria who could fly and shoot out a ray from it's mouth so it ended up defeating Gomes and saved the world!

In the second show the creature was a monkey who grew to be a hundred times the size of a regular one. That was because of some fictional nuts the monkey ate and in the episode was named Goro who wasn't a violent monster so wasn't killed at the end. Goro is in the top two screenshots, the final monster from episode three has the next two pics and was never named. It looked like some sort of Slug or Praying Mantis that had hatched from some mini golden eggs that had been sent to Earth from Mars! Not enough space to describe these four creatures but hope it interests you enough to check out those recaps.

 Main Cast: Though it appears this had nothing to do with the "Ultraman" franchise in a way it does as this series is considered to be it's forerunner. The first "Ultraman" series began a little bit after this show ended and there's not enough time to talk about that show and it's movies which I do recommend. Hiroko Sakurai who plays the reporter Yuriko in this show is quite known for her "Ultraman" work as she was in the first series plus a few more after that along with being in many of the movies. Will do some editing and adding as we go along though not as much as other dramas, the top three are by far the main characters. There will be many monsters in this series, perhaps one per episode! Won't give any details about them at the top but will talk about them during the recap.

**** Not sure how to explain this and perhaps it doesn't need it. But when the show opens a narrator tells us what we are about to watch will be something extraordinary, is what we view real or just a part of our imagination? A screenshot of that is above and that's how the American series "Outer Limits" also opened and at the end the viewers were asked to think again with about what we viewed, to date this show hasn't done that. Every episode has it's own title, this episode's is.... 

I Saw A Bird

Kenji Sahara as Jun Manjome.... Don't think any actor was in more of the classic TOHO monster films than Sahara was between 1954 to 1975 and also in four "Ultraman" series! Jun is a pilot for Hoshikawa Airlines, he can fly both planes and copters. Though a pilot Jun does dream of becoming a best selling sci-fi writer, he's also adept with guns and how that came to be is a mystery. Plus Jun is a master with cars and could have been a racer, one last thing is that Jun loves science which is how he and his mates are friends with Professor Ichinotani.

Yasuhiko Saijou as Ippei Togawa.... Jun's assistant at Hoshikawa Airlines but Ippei doesn't have any licenses yet but is close to getting one for flying helicopters. Bit of a goofball but seems to be much more intelligent than others think, Jun must see that too as he does trust Ippei fully.

Hiroko Sakurai as Yuriko Edogawa.... On the left below, will have a different pic in the future. 21 year old reporter for the Mainichi Shimbun(daily news) paper. Yuriko is the youngest at the newspaper but her editor Seki believes fully in her and sends Yuriko out on the harder stories such as the mysterious and unexplainable....

Ureo Egawa as Professor Ichinotani.... We finally met this older professor in the third episode. Know very little to date about him such as how did Jun and his mates come to be friends with this man who is ultra intelligent. Though him and the next character Seki are important to the drama each will only be in about half the episodes.

Yoshifumi Tajima as Seki.... Yuriko's editor at Mainichi Shimbun(daily news), older man who acts tough though is a softie and often gives Yuriko the stranger/mysterious cases. Not a huge role but an important one and in the second episode Seki was the Hero!

 There will be many guest characters in this series but may not include any of their names unless that part goes for two episodes or it's someone very famous. 

Previous recaps: There is no ongoing storyline but all of the shows have been entertaining so here are the links to all of the recaps done.

Episode one: Gomes .... Episode two: Goro and Goro .... Episode three: A Gift From Space

Episode four: Massive Flower .... Episode five: Pegulia .... Episode six: Grow Turtle!

Episode seven: SOS Mount Fuji .... Episode eight: Terror of the Sweet Honey

Episode nine: Baron Spider .... Episode ten: The Underground Super Express

 There aren't many but a few videos of this show on YT, mostly short scenes. Added this video in for the eleventh show but it's a clip from episode fourteen which of course hasn't been recapped yet. But any kind of video is hard to find so added it in now so you can see what the show is like to an extent and do highly recommend this drama, especially the Black and White version.

   

 

 Will make this intro much shorter than they've been, getting slightly burnt out from doing so many of these even though compared to most other shows these recaps don't take nearly as long to write up. My mini goal is to have one more pair of recaps before July ends as that would bring us to the halfway point of this 28 episode series. Through eleven shows we've had a variety of monsters or other odd creatures that usually become massive in size. There's been a gorilla, monkey, two prehistoric dinosaurs, a flower and even a balloon! For this show the 'monster' is right above and it's not the little boy! He had a biggish role in this episode and thought to myself another whiny brat(?!) but this boy seemed decent but most of the villagers where he lived didn't seem to like him. The 'monster' is that tiny bird he's holding, it was small until the very end and while it doesn't look it the bird may have been prehistoric! Well, so much for a short intro(!) and things such as that have become impossible for me as of late as I just feel the need to always tell you viewers about every single detail. Do wish more bloggers would do that as I always get a bit peeved visiting a site and the writer only doing a so-so job at informing us of info or whatever, now on to this recap....

 The top screenshot is how this show opened, didn't think of something until now. While this was a solid show a little bit of horror would have really helped, one reason is because of what took place in the beginning. It may be hard to tell but in the middle of that second screenshot is a dark object that was actually a white bird. The action began at night, the location was a zoo and the guard Mabuchi was making his nightly rounds. But something very odd was going on as the animals were all hyper and were zipping around their cages, the guard had no clue what was going on but did spot flying away that object which was mentioned. The following morning Mabuchi was discovered by the two day guards, he mumbled to them "I saw a bird" and then passed out, the next day he died but of what? The two day guards discovered that all of the cages had been broken into and the animals were gone but one guard did point out an important detail. The cages hadn't been broken into but the animals had broken out of them and where did they disappear to? That's an excellent question and we never did learn the answer, it would have been nice to know as some of the animals were dangerous such as a gorilla and lion. 

 One possibility is that they were whisked away as this was the first show that dealt with Time Travel, that's a theme I enjoy and hope it's part of at least one future episode. Minato is a section of Yokohama and the terrific series "Abunao Deka" was set there. In this episode there was a fictional small village named Minato which was along the east coast of Japan and think very far south of Tokyo. Fishing was the main vocation there and one morning as the locals were getting ready to set off in their boats a mysterious vessel appeared in their bay. That's in the third to last screenshot, there is another of it below and it did resemble an ancient Nordic ship, there was a dragon head at each end. The three main characters(heroes?) Jun, Ippei and Yuriko always seem to be in the middle of the action even when the incident happens far from their home base. The trio just happened to be on a boat when this mysterious ship sailed into the bay. The three went on board and so didn't a few of the fishermen but guess what.... the ship was abandoned!!!! Where could everyone have gone and it did appear whoever had been there was about to eat as a table was set for five. There was a ship log though Jun couldn't understand the writing but grabbed it for someone to analyze. The bottom screenshot is of Yuriko who had seen that bird while on the ship, she was the only one to notice it and that bird may be from prehistoric times!

 Everyone soon departed that mysterious shop and the mystery soon deepened even more for as the top screenshot above shows that ship sank!!!! No clue on how that happened either and this episode had more unanswered questions than any other show. In three screenshots above you can see the boy who I mentioned in the intro. He appeared to be about 12-14 in age and his name is Saburo who lived in the village of Minato. While everyone's attention was focused on that now sunk boat Saburo grabbed one of the unattended mini boats at the pier and took off in it! Just as he was departing that bird above appeared and seemed to take a liking towards Saburo, the feeling was mutual. The destination ended up being a very small deserted island, least I didn't see any people. Not sure if Saburo was running away or this was just his spot to hide away at but he had been there before. Saburo did name the bird Kuro, in Japanese the word for bird is Tori and perhaps I should have a section for all of the words that you may have learnt here! While Saburo was with his new friend on that small island Jun, Ippei and Yuriko had traveled back to Tokyo, whenever there's a very huge and unknown discovery the trio seek out their friend who is the esteemed professor Ichinotani.

 He's the older man above and Jun had brought the ship's log with him in hopes the professor could translate it. Which Ichinotani was able to do and did he find some odd entries in this log. The biggest by far was that the last date written in it was from.... 998 years ago!!!! Jun immediately thought about Time Travel and was it possible this ship at Minato Bay had traveled a thousand years into the future???? It being a sci-fi drama of course it's possible, on the last page of the ship's log was written "I saw a bird" which were also the last words the zoo guard had said before he died. That's when Yuriko revealed she saw a bird on this thousand year old ship and how did her friends miss it? Who knows but they did and all did believe Yuriko's story, she checked Ichinontani's books on birds and finally found one that looked like the bird she saw. However that did raise some eyebrows as the bird Yuriko claimed to have seen was called a Larugeus, she had to see a baby version as this bird could grow to 43 meters(141 feet). Plus according to Ishinotani the Larugeus was last known to exist during the Third Glacial period which in Japan was 20,000 years ago! But Ichinotani also said that in the middle of the 10th century some extinct prehistoric creatures had been seen in India and the Larugeus may have been one of them. Jun then wondered if that meant Time Travel was possible and that this ship truly could have zoomed forward a thousand years from India with the Larugeus bird on that ship!

 Whew, there were a lot of possible scenarios about the ship and Larugeus bird, did reveal most details but there wasn't enough time to go into everything. It was the following day and Saburo was still on that small island. During the night the Kuro bird had disappeared and above Saburo was asking where did it go.... as if the bird would answer! We viewers saw some of what happened, the mini Larugeus(Kuro) bird had gone back to Minato and it appeared the bird had both attacked a coop full of hens and also released many. The top screenshot shows their feathers on a road and like the zoo animals where did these hens disappear to? The Larugeus bird did return to the island and reunited with Saburo but the bird wasn't the boy's only visitor. Arriving shortly after was Saburo's uncle Kanda who was furious with at his nephew for disappearing and taking his boat to the island, him and two friends tried to drag Saburo back. But Larugeus would have none of that and began to attack the three men by pecking at them, it was still a small bird. So this trio left the island without Saburo or the bird but when they reached their village of Minato Kanda notified the police who went to the island. They somehow were able to corral the bird and put it in a cage, all that is right above. The esteemed professor Ichinotani did warn the police about the bird who was a baby Larugeus and how it could grow though he wasn't believed.

 Also on the scene in Minato was Jun who had some advice for Saburo above and said try to forget about Larugeus as he's actually a monster from thousands of yeas ago! Which was soon proven true as Larugeus did begin to grow and it happened all at once as within twenty or so minutes it grew to a size of 43 meters(141 feet)! Larugeus wasn't a violent bird/monster but when it flew in the air it's wings gave off so much wind that all of the village's building, bridges, cars etc. were destroyed! But just as quickly as that happened this episode seemed to end at the snap of a finger. What happened to the village is in the bottom two screenshots above and also the first below plus you can see how large Larugeus had become. Have no clue why or where he may have been heading but Larugeus suddenly flew away with Saburo pleading from the ground to bring him along which of course didn't happen, the episode ended on that note and where was the destination of Larugeus? That was an interesting show but that ending was a bit too rushed and what did happen to this massive bird? The Time Travel theme was also good but with episodes being just 25 minutes in length there's often not enough time to fully flesh out the stories. Hmmmm, as mentioned earlier this episode did seem to have more unanswered questions than any other show. Will have one more pair of recaps this month which will bring us to the halfway point of this superb series.